The Cafe Girl Page 19

  'Well... yes, him. But also some of the local party members. Everyone seems to think you may have spirited a certain waitress off to a Gestapo-determined fate, all for the crime of being a socialist in a country run by people who also claim to be socialists, albeit socialists of a more fascist stripe.'

  'And from your tone I take it you've realized how preposterous that is.'

  'I have. Although, from your infatuation with her and your obvious distaste for my politics, I admit to being slightly unsure at first.'

  'What tipped you over to the side of darkness and authoritarianism?'

  'Hardly funny in the circumstance, Giraud. Anyway, it was his idea that you'd buried her in this park that snapped me out of it. Outside of the difficult of pulling off such a task in front of a cafe and two apartment complexes, there was the fact that you love this place.'

  'And...'

  'And?' Levesque asked.

  'And the fact that you know me to be a decent person, not a crazed murderer.'

  'Well... I wouldn't go so far as decent, but I admit, I have seen no violent tendencies.' He nodded toward the other side of the road. 'Our young friend over there, on the other hand, seems quite convinced you're guilty as sin. He was telling me that it was your crew that raided the house on Rue de Laghouat the other night.'

  'It was.'

  'And she wasn't there?'

  'She was not, although it was clear she had been.'

  'You arrested four people.'

  'They were conspiring to oppose the provisional government...'

  'Giraud...'

  'And my superiors knew all about them, Anton; this was not a matter which could be ignored.'

  'Okay. Let's assume I accept that...'

  'Let's assume you accept what is true. Fine.'

  'Where has she gone? None of the people at the cafe seem to know. Now I hear that she was not at the safe house when you raided it, although she had been living there. It is easy to see, Giraud; It is easy to see why people think something terrible may have happened to her.'

  'I am making inquiries, Anton, believe me. If she is still in Paris and can answer, we will hear from her eventually.'

  Levesque chewed on his sandwich; Giraud noticed the older man still managed to find eggs easily, even though they were rare outside of the black market. For all his sanctimony, it seemed there was some pragmatism deep within Anton Levesque after all.

  Perhaps that was why his earlier question surprised him all the more; Giraud had never thought of himself as an intimidating man, or lecherous. And yet even someone who knew him had jumped to the conclusion that his advances had led to something twisted and dangerous, his unrequited affections to murder.

  Would he see it that way as well, if he looked at his behavior with outside eyes? Had he missed the signs, suggestions hidden in furtive glances and body language that his presence intimidated her? He tried to think back to the few occasions upon which she'd glanced his way, the one time they passed in the street.

  No, there had been nothing like that, nothing to prompt such antipathy from the piano player... except that he was a policeman, and often dressed as such. He reminded himself that as much as he enjoyed the company in the cul-de-sac and watching people stop at the cafe, they were all from the same social circle, the same bohemian set that had made France such an easy mark for the Germans in the first place. And none of them had any love for the law.

  Perhaps it had been foolish to think she would ever see something in him; she was probably only twenty, close to half his age. She was young and pretty and passionate. She wore red dresses and red lipstick and red pumps. Is that what people noticed, his passion for her? Was it that obvious, and in his grand obviousness had he somehow condemned himself to this parade of suspicious glances and lingering stares?

  'You two look deep in thought.' It was the banker, Hubert Rousseau.

  'I've been trying to determine whether our policeman friend is in fact a corruptor of innocent young things,' Levesque said. 'So far, the verdict favors him being far too staid and predictable.'

  'A wonderfully backhanded compliment,' Giraud said. 'Surely this is why I attend this tiny park in this essentially forgotten neighborhood, to socialize with a cranky communist.'

  'Hmmph,' Levesque said. 'I thought you said something about writing a book...'

  'That was the original idea, yes,' Giraud said. 'Unfortunately, I have yet to find a story that befits the place.'

  Up the hill, the number two began its leisurely approach to the stop around the corner from the cafe. Perhaps the best idea, Giraud decided, was to try and cut his old friend off before he started bothering everyone, asking questions about his infatuation with Isabelle that would be difficult to answer.

  He began to walk that way. He was halfway up the hill when Vaillancourt became the last to debark the bus. He waved at Giraud. 'Damien!' he yelled.

  Vaillancourt seemed glad to see him, as always. It was a little game he liked to play, Giraud had decided, a disarming tactic. 'Giraud, my old classmate!' he said. 'You look a little peaked. Not sleeping well again? Out all night?'

  'Shift changes at work can be difficult when one hasn't had to deal with them for a while. What can I do for you, Vaillancourt? You're a long way from the Fourteenth.'

  'Hmmm...? Yes, well, you know the job, there is always something to followup that takes one off the well-trod path.' He strode past Giraud and down the hill. 'It's a nice little neighborhood. I can see why you like it here after spending eight hours in Saint Denis.'

  'Saint Denis is a hardworking city and deserves its own respect,' Giraud said. 'Having said, it is true that the park is aesthetically...'

  'Still... not many other people around this part of town in the middle of the day,' Vaillancourt interrupted. 'It is out-of-the-way enough that I suppose people don't find it easily.'

  'Yes, that's quite true,' Giraud said, trying to keep pace. Where was he heading with his line of thinking? Vaillancourt had always confounded him with mental gymnastics.

  'There's a piano player who works around here somewhere and doesn't like you very much at all,' the investigator said.

  Giraud went white. 'You've met him?'

  'No, not yet. But I had a rather interesting chat with his younger sister on that bus and was surprised when your name came up. She said he'd met you at the park here. He thinks you might have something to do with his friend going missing, a waitress who works in this part of the city. Perhaps I should chat with him.'

  'You know this is ridiculous, I assume.'

  Vaillancourt shrugged. He stopped, then looked over Giraud's shoulder and down the hill, as if trying to get a better look at the little park. 'It's not my place to judge, just to record and investigate. But I'm sure you're correct. However, there was one thing about this missing girl I found fascinating. Would you like to know what that is?'

  He was attempting to get under Giraud's skin, and it was working; but the policeman carefully held his tongue. 'Well, she is very pretty.'

  'Yes... but aside from the sister rambling about your supposed unrequited love for this girl, what I found interesting was her description.'

  Giraud didn't like the sound of that. 'What about it?'

  'It's funny, but I have this suspicion she may be the same girl the Germans are looking for in an unrelated matter.'

  Damn, Giraud thought. Damn, damn, damn.

  'Really? Why is that?'

  'Well, the musician told his sister that he didn't think the sketch they handed out was very accurate...' Vaillancourt said, removing the folded up piece of paper from his pocket and holding it up for a moment. 'But when she described this Isabelle, he said she was petite, with short brown hair and large brown eyes. And I remembered that when the Germans initially sent out their bulletin, before the sketch was circulated, their exact wording was just that: 'petite, with short brown hair and large brown eyes.'

  Giraud gave him a searching look. 'Are you seriously basing the connection on so little? I thi
nk you might reaching a little on this one, Vaillancourt. A third of the women in Paris are petite, with brown hair.'

  'He also told me that some of your men, under the auspices of the SD, raided a communist safe house at which she had been renting a room, just a few nights ago.'

  'It's true. But there was no sign of her...'

  'He mentioned that, as well. He said she had not been to work for a while, and she had not been seen since leaving to catch a bus a day earlier.' He nodded back up the hill behind them. 'This very same route, I believe. He said that up until that point, he rather liked you; he advised you to chase her, catch up with her on the way to the stop.'

  Giraud nodded. How much did he know? Had someone else on the bus identified him? If Vaillancourt's methodology was to make him feel as if he was being toyed with, the investigator was doing a good job. 'Yes, that's right. I made a rather sterling effort at it, if I do say so myself.'

  'So you caught up to her?'

  'No. No, as I said, it was a sterling effort. But she had already climbed aboard the bus and it had pulled away by the time I got there.'

  'Really?'

  'Yes, really.' Giraud did not pause, he did not look away, or chew his lip, or give any other visual cue that he knew a professional might pick up on. Instead, he squinted slightly and peered at the other man as if deeply curious. 'Vaillancourt, hang on just a moment... you don't actually think I have something to do with this woman's disappearance, do you?'

  The other man smiled, but his eyes held a certain pity in them, a concern that suggested Giraud was only lying to himself. He was a magnificent actor, Giraud thought. He wondered if the feeling was reciprocated.

  'As I said, Giraud, I merely catalogue evidence and try to reach conclusions. Right now, I have no reason to arrest you for any such crime. Or for black marketeering, for that matter. If those circumstances change? Well then I assure you, you shall be the first to know.'

  'They won't,' Giraud said. 'But I do wonder what it will take to persuade you that your obvious inclination to pursue me is incorrect.'

  The other policeman shrugged. 'Produce a healthy, breathing Isabelle Gaspard, for one. That would greatly impress me. In the meantime...' He looked back at the stop again. '... I shall investigate whether there is any connection between the two reports. I suppose if one were to change buses...' He moved his finger in a motion through the air, as if counting stops. 'Perhaps.'

  'Perhaps what?' Giraud demanded. 'Vaillancourt, don't toy with me! Tell me what you're thinking, or leave me in peace for once!' Then he realized how vulnerable it made him look, how guilty. 'What I mean is... this place, the park down the hill, it’s my only respite. You understand? I don't want work brought here.'

  Vaillancourt grinned slyly. At the stop, a number two running the other way approached. 'Of course, old friend. Of course. Besides: I can always come back another time. And perhaps it is time for me to get home for supper. You know my wife on these matters. I shall be seeing you soon, Giraud.'

  And with that, he turned to head back up the street towards the bus stop.

  Back at the park, the others had watched from sixty yards away as the two men talked and Giraud gesticulated wildly. When he walked back and sat down, both looked amused.

  'I have the strong suspicion he doesn't like you very much,' Rousseau said. 'The way you confronted him on the sidewalk made it look like you didn't appreciate him being in your world...

  'I think maybe he wants my job,' Giraud lied.

  Rousseau scoffed slightly at that. 'From his glib expression,' he suggested, 'I think maybe he wants your head.'

  Hopefully, his former colleague would recognize the musician's ramblings as paranoid attention seeking. Vaillancourt had obviously not given up on pinning the black market cigarette ring on him and that was what he would be asking about; but there was no doubt from the sense of antipathy on display that the musician would say something.

  'You do make friends, don't you?' Levesque chimed in. 'Who's the detective?'

  'He's a colleague,' Giraud said. 'A very tenacious inspector named Vaillancourt.' It occurred to him just then that the last thing he wanted was Vaillancourt getting a sniff of a murder case. He'd take it as a challenge, as far out of his duties and jurisdiction as it was. Then he'd be all over both matters, perhaps even sensing a singular connection between the two.

  'Well at least you don't have to guess what he wanted,' Levesque said.

  'What's that?' Rousseau asked. 'If you'll excuse my asking, I arrived late on this one.'

  Levesque nodded towards the cafe. 'The piano player thinks Giraud killed the waitress and buried her in the park.'

  Rousseau's eyebrows rose at the notion. 'Really? And I take it from your reaction, Giraud, that the policeman walking up the hill is a thorn in your side of some sort?'

  'He's internal security,' Giraud explained.

  'Eh?'

  Levesque answered for him. 'He roots out police corruption.'

  'In this city?' the banker exclaimed. 'He'd have a more difficult time finding someone completely honest.'

  Levesque shot him a disquieted look.

  'Well it's true!' Rousseau declared. 'Everyone has something going on the side to get by, Anton, even you. You seem to have an awfully good supply of eggs for those sandwiches you bring here daily...'

  'That is because I also 'seem' to have a daughter who lives in the country with a strapping farmer husband,' he said. 'You two should not assume everyone has become as morally fluid as those with the financial opportunity to abuse the boundaries of decency.'

  'Ah, here it comes,' Rousseau mocked. 'The usual line about how greed and capitalism are destroying the world. I hate to break it to you, Anton, but capitalists did not invade Poland.'

  35...

  That night, Giraud sat in his office with the door closed and stared at a small, rectangular piece of paper. He'd been holding onto it for nearly three days, unsure of what to do with it, but certain it was the key to his future, and perhaps a good one at that.

  He'd found it at the safe house, where things had not gone as expected. He'd received the call at home, as Mombourquette had promised, then ventured just a few blocks to the concrete four-story building, home to a series of relatively inexpensive apartments, many of them shared. They'd blocked off both corridors to the flat, so that no one could get in or out, and gone in at just after three o'clock in the morning, expecting to find a cell of communists with growing influence in North Paris.

  Instead, they had arrested four students from the Sorbonne who were known agitators and who had in their possession both leaflets and the materials for making explosives. There was no sign of Laszlo Fontaine or his family. There was no sign that anyone named Jean-Max had ever lived there.

  While they'd searched the other rooms, Giraud had told his officers to leave him alone with Isabelle's small quarters. The room was perhaps eight feet by twelve feet, with a bed against one wall, a desk, a potted plant that had withered and died. On the back of the desk, a series of text books were propped up against the wall. There was a cross above the bed, which surprised him given her socialist leanings. On the wall next to the bed she'd hung a print by the artist Marc Chagal, just a cheap poster of a more expensive work, but tasteful nonetheless.

  He moved over to the roll-top desk and began to methodically search the drawers and compartments. There were the basics of stationary: some clips, pens, ink pots, blotting paper. But there were no documents, nothing important. He pulled each drawer out and checked behind for false compartments, but found nothing.

  Then he noticed the stool. It was surprisingly boxy, like a piano bench. He wondered if...

  Giraud lifted the stool seat. Sure enough, it was hinged, with a compartment secreted beneath. Her party card, some loose francs, some typed documents -- plans, perhaps; a notebook that appeared blank, although some pages had been torn out judging by the binder rings; and in the back of the notebook?

  A bank draft made out to Isabelle Ga
spard.

  For one hundred thousand American dollars.

  He'd stared at it for nearly a minute while considering the implications. He'd pocketed the draft, of course, drawn on another account at the CNEP. Whoever was supplying her with so much money had to be attempting to fund a proper resistance. There was no other purpose for her to be shown such largesse, a staggering sum when compared to the values of the Reichs Mark and the Franc. It meant she had been earmarked to lead in some capacity, or was extremely close to that person.

  And so a few days after the raid, he found himself sitting his armchair at home staring at the bank draft once more. He turned it in his hands, letting the light from the window play through it, looking at the watermarks. He had no reason to think it was not legitimate. But Giraud had never seen so much money, and his brain seemed to be having a difficult time accepting it, as if he might turn away for a moment only to find it had spontaneously vanished.

  He lowered it slightly and stared blankly ahead as he pondered what he might have gotten himself into. He couldn't countenance turning it over to the Germans; at the same time, the resistance wouldn't hesitate to kill him to get the money back. It was staggering wealth, enough for him to get out of Paris and be comfortable for a long time, to be certain.

  But only if he could cash it, which he could not do without the girl.

  If he could produce the girl, he could get Vaillancourt off his back; but she might also turn him over to the Germans. And the Germans would probably then shoot both of them. Even if he could prove she was still alive, he had no idea how to get her to hand over the money, or better yet, convince her to flee with him while there was still time, use their new wealth and some of his plundered savings to get out of France before Vaillancourt or the Germans caught up to one or both of them.

  The only thing he was certain of was that he had not harmed her. Of that, he was sure.

  Mind you... there was an anxiety within whenever someone suggested it, like there was perhaps something playing at the back of his mind, something he'd forgotten. It felt like the fragment of a dream, solid, but simultaneously ethereal and unreachable.